The Extract: Aren't We Sisters?

Patricia Ferguson's new novel sparkles with intrigue

Patricia Ferguson's last novel, The Widwife's Daughter, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Now she's back with Aren't We Sisters? Charting the lives of three women - Norah, Lettie and Rae - it is a beautifully written and unputdownable novel that sparkles with intrigue. We continue our series of extracts with a glimpse into its pages.

Rae counted: there was Mrs Givens, one; there was the delivery boy from the bakery, half-frozen to his bicycle, two; there was Nameless Gardener, rheumy-eyed, three; sometimes, briefly, there was Minnie from the village, clearly not all there but doing The Rough; and now and then there was the postman, generally bringing someone else’s letters. Human contacts: five.
Nameless Gardener, biblical in wooden-Noah jutting white chin-fringe, was not only Nameless, but had other similar lacks, thought Rae, watching him now and then out of the library window. He was often Motionless, for example, especially in the kitchen garden, and in over a week so far had returned no greeting: Speechless.
There was also a grey kitchen cat with yellow eyes. The cat had its own special chair at the table, and when on her first afternoon Rae had visited Mrs Givens there it had glared at her with the most extraordinarily hostile intensity. She had tried not to look back but every time she turned her head there it was again, rigid with outrage.
‘’E ain’t a bit friendly,’ Mrs Givens had said at last.
Rae had had a good go at this herself later on, in front of her dressing-table mirror. The West Country accent was easy enough, child’s play; the placing more difficult, as Mrs Givens seemed to speak right from the back of her throat, with a certain coaxing quality to the sound. And the various strands of meaning in her tone had been hard to reproduce too, as they were so slight: amusement, approval, and a cautious hint that despite Tabby’s intransigence Mrs Givens herself was prepared to prove at least moderately friendly, should circumstances permit.
‘’E ain’t a bit friendly,’ said Rae to her mirror again, this time absolutely spot on; realizing as she did so that for once there really wasn’t anyone to amuse. To show off to.
‘And your hair’s too dark,’ she added accusingly, in her own voice. Leaving the unsatisfactory image behind, she got up and went to her bedroom window.
‘An isolated house, beside a lake,’ the helpful if unsigned letter had read. Presumably from the presiding doctor, who was apparently based in London. And in fact, thought Rae, it was more like an isolated lake with a house. She stared out at the great ruffled sheet of water, steel-grey, murky, fringed at its distant far shore with a yellowed ruin of bulrushes, just the sort of place you despairingly waded into at dead of night; though of course this was partly due to Tell Her Now, with dear old Antony Wayward.
Seven whole years ago now, marvelled Rae, resting her forehead on the cold glass of the window. All that fuss about the lighting. Paid off though, you’d’ve sworn it was a moonlit night. Antony bellowing, ‘Head back, arms back, face up, you’re saying goodbye to the stars!’, his voice actually breaking a little, the old softie. But he’d been right enough; Rae had seen the whole film herself once in Piccadilly, at a full-house matinee, and women all round her had sobbed aloud.
At the far end a Regency someone had built a little bridge of prettily arching wrought iron, in order to make the lake look even bigger than it was, a bridge over nothing.
‘Mostly shut up, apparently,’ the typed unsigned letter had continued, ‘but with long-established service in situ, and everything as private as you could possibly wish.’ Once, when she thought Mrs Givens was out, Rae had crept about trying doorknobs. Both rooms on either side of her own were locked, and so were all the rooms on the next floor up, apart from a narrow side room where a blue-and-white floral lavatory stood throne-like on a plinth of creaking mahogany.
The staircase above the third floor was uncarpeted and worn, and every step squeaked. At the top was another narrower corridor, with several more locked doors. But at the very end the last dented brass doorknob had loosely turned in her hand.
No carpet here, just floorboards, a narrow iron bedstead with a ticking mattress covered in a sheet of calico, and a plain pine chest of drawers: a maid’s room. A lower servant, perhaps the under kitchen maid, thought Rae. From the little attic window she could see the horizon, grey and distant. On top of the chest of drawers there was a set of stains, rings within rings, marking years of wet jugs. The room was very cold. No fireplace at all.
On the way down she had met Mrs Givens coming up. ‘I’m trespassing,’ Rae had said at once. ‘Sorry: I’m nosy.’ ‘Not much to see,’ Mrs Givens had returned, almost easily. ‘Shall you take your tea in the library again, ma’am?’ Rae had seized on the library, had stood on the threshold on being shown round and, despite the exhaustion of travel, gasped aloud with pleasure and greed. Along with the sack-like dresses and the selection of nasty adjustable underwear, she had brought an entire suitcase full of stuff to read, together with stacks of notebooks and her sleek new typewriter. But here was a whole real library just for her, shelf after packed shelf floor to ceiling on three entire walls! It had taken her some time to understand that most of the books were about the same age as the house, perhaps even a job lot: that the matching leather covers and gold lettering and spines with stout horizontal welts were largely decor.
They were beautiful, and smelt delicious, of dry cleanly decay, sweet and peppery, or flowery as daffodils. But impossible to read, memoirs of titled dullards, accounts of battles in wars she had never heard of; some had complex pictures faced with a protective rustle of ancient tissue, woodcut illustrations mainly as indecipherable as the texts, like one busy mystery of digging labourers, wheelbarrows, bonfires, and mud-pie-making which had suddenly resolved itself into clarity:
‘They’re making bricks!’ Rae had cried aloud, triumphantly, and then heard herself, exclaiming to no one.
On a shelf beside the nicest armchair, handled into crumbly suede, she had found Lovell’s Complete Bestiary. The engravings on its thick and speckled pages were straightforward to begin with, squirrels holding acorns and hares leaping in March madness; but then Lovell set off for foreign parts, and seemed less and less sure of itself.
The picture labelled ‘Hippotomos’, for example, had looked alright at first, big broad familiar head on great barrel of body, and short thick legs. But Lovell’s hippopotamus sported fur like a mole’s, a hippo in velvet. Another shaggy spaniel-headed beast with a curved back and enormous feet like furry hobnail boots was merely ‘An Animal of the Bear Species’, while the mysterious pig-like ‘Babyronessa’ would hardly have been able to see where it was going, thought Rae, not with tusks that curved right up and practically speared its own eyeballs.
But here was a ‘Camelopard’, kitten-fur spotted like a leopard’s, sturdy camel-like body, long curving neck as graceful as a swan’s, demure little sideways smile. No real giraffe could be half so charming, thought Rae, and under- stood at last that none of these unfamiliar animals had been drawn from life. They had been lists of attributes, imagined and guessed at. That was how they had done things in those days.
These days too, thought Rae, looking up. Hadn’t she taken her lover’s words and a selection of his deeds and turned them into her own construction of him? He was another imagined animal, she thought, that had never really lived, and was suddenly engulfed by one of her bad moments.
These were not thought, she told herself, when it had begun to pass, and she was herself again, but feeling; you felt the choices you had made, and felt that there was now no other way out, that it was far too late to change your mind. You could only wait out a bad moment; but when it was over you just had to remind yourself what you still stood to gain: your entire future. Possibilities.
And remember that you were doing the best you could. You weren’t beaten, you weren’t finished. You had merely withdrawn for a while, to safety, here, at Nowhere with Lake, and you were just going to wait here a few vital weeks more until your problem had solved itself. Then, thank God, others – others you had paid, professional experienced others – would take over and you could set about forgetting the whole ghastly business.

Sign up to the bazaar newsletters now:

Please tick here if you would like to opt out of the Harper’s Bazaar Beauty Bulletin Newsletter.
Hearst: We will also let you know about discounts and great offers from us, tick this box if you'd rather not know about these.
Hearst Partners: would like to let you know about some of their fantastic discounts, special offers, and promotions. We promise you wont be bombarded. Tick here if you would like to receive these.